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September 28, 2015
07:44 PM CDT

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Between 21-24 September I observed and photographed 24 different color banded Piping Plovers on the upper Texas coast and adjacent Louisiana. 22 in Texas, 2 in Louisiana. I have provided data and photos on all these birds to various governmental agencies in the U.S. and Canada, as well as several universities who are involved in various projects with Piping Plovers. I'll hold off posting these to iNat until I get data on the bird and its origin. I received info on this bird today, so I'll post that record here for the information to be available on iNat for anyone interested.

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A fresh-looking shell was also documented and suspected to occur as non-fossil by Richard Fullington in his 1979 report of Land and Freshwater Mollusca of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, but that report seems as if it had been forgotten until recently.

After much debate among us and several other experts about the fossil vs. non-fossil status of that shell (Oreohelix spp have been recorded from the Guads in fossil in previous work), we finally had an opportunity to return to this area and search for this species and perhaps answer the question once and for all. My bet was on non-fossil.

Benjamin Hutchins, Zachary Schwartz (my son), and I took a 2-day backpacking and sampling trip into the high Guads. Soon after arriving at the approximate site where Ben had previously found the shell, we started finding bleached dead shells, then a very fresh dead shell, and then finally 6 live specimens! We were also sampling litter to document the snail community in this habitat, and a number of other species also occur there.

Aside from the excitement of the 'snail hunt', this is a significant find for snail diversity in TX, because it definitively adds a new family to the list of snail fauna in the state. Thanks to Ben for instigating this search and for inviting us to be a part of it.

At this point, we are calling this Oreohelix neomexicana. It fits the description for that species reasonably well, though there is apparently significant variation in size and shape in the species. I am not aware of any molecular work that has been done to confirm that these mountain-top species from various ranges in NM are all the same species. The nearest site where it has been documented in NM is in the Sacramento Mountains.

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April 10, 2013
06:05 PM CDT

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This record gleaned from the pages of "A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians" by Roger Conant in the Peterson field guide series. I had a 1958 copyright edition of this book as a teenager, and still have it. In my younger years I wrote the location and date where I saw and/or captured certain species directly onto the pages of this book, and thus the information to provide this record comes from that. The first 6500+ records I posted on iNat had photo documentation, but now I am posting these records which do not have photos just to provide the data point for the species and location as best as I can for the historical record.

I was 11 years old at the time of this observation, and I still recall the snake spreading its neck like a cobra, hissing, etc. It made a huge impression on me. I was on a local boy scout hike and the leader knew what the snake was.

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December 31, 2017
11:06 AM CST

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My uploads will be nothing if not diverse! We were birding La Barqueta Preserve near the resort of the same name and took a moment to walk over to the dark gray volcanic sand beach to do a little beach combing. Mary Kay noticed this small clam at the high tide line. For size perspective, my index finger is about 20 mm across.

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December 14, 2017
02:40 AM CST

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You know you’ve found a large moth when…

1. After a 40 year career as a wildlife biologist, you can’t believe what you’re seeing is real.

2. Your ruler isn’t long enough to get a good measurement (2nd image), so you go back to get a longer ruler (3rd image) and that isn’t long enough, so you scramble around to find a carpenter’s measuring tape to fully span the wings (4th image).

3. Your astonishment is like the joy of a child on Christmas morning; you start laughing and giggling uncontrollably.

4. The largest moth on your sheet has a wingspan 40X the size of the smallest one.

5. You stay up until 3:30 a.m. journaling about one moth.

6. You start taking selfies...with a moth (last image).

To the best of my ability to measure this critter, the wingspan (with a bit of the tip of the right FW missing) is about 27.8 cm, so it would probably be about 28.5 cm (11.2 in) if it were intact. The species is said to have the largest wingspan of any Lepidopteran in the world.

The moth was initially discovered on the sheet by Mary Kay Sexton. I had overlooked it.

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August 19, 2017
04:26 AM CDT

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These were the first Jaguars we encountered on our first boat ride on the Cuiaba River hoping to see these animals. This pair was loafing on a hot afternoon along a sand bank of the river. The pair mated several times. Later the female came to the edge of the river to drink.

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I went out the other day as it was about to rain to see if I could follow some dragonflies and find the best types of places they hole-up when it rains.

I got there a little too late and the rain was coming down pretty heavily so I just hung out under some tree cover and looked around.

As I moved from one covered spot to another I saw this lone Blue Dasher clinging to a branch, sitting there as it rained. He kept trying to wipe the large water droplet that had accumulated near the vertex but he was unable to dislodge it.

I don't know what it is like to see like a dragonfly but I imagine the water must distort the vision quite a bit. As well it could possibly have been a grooming response (just as if other detritus where resting on eyes) and not been related to the fact that the water may distort vision.

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May 22, 2017
04:01 PM CDT

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White Rock lake, Sunset Bay
Pelican Yoga
Pelicans perform a lot of bizarre bill stretching maneuvers to keep their bills in top condition. They have the longest bill of any bird at close to a foot and a half.

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April 21, 2017
09:01 AM CDT

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I saved...or, rather, Mother Nature saved one of the best items for the very last. I found this huge final instar larva of Two-tailed Swallowtail resting on some wafer-ash (Ptelea trifoliata) in my back yard at 11:54 p.m. on Tuesday evening. It was preparing to pupate. I'll (hopefully) upload an image of the chrysalis in the next day or two.

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February 13, 2017
08:22 PM CST

Description

I'm uploading these field sketches of two goldeneyes which were studied by a group of birders at Austin's Hornsby Bend in November 1979. One of these female goldeneye's generated a lot of discussion as to the possibility of it being a Barrow's. Despite much detailed research and @greglasley's photos*, no definitive conclusion was ever reached.
* http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5105221The present record applies to the *other* female duck, a standard (if rare for the area) Common Goldeneye. Note: My sketches, done the same day, were intialed by me with the date "11/17/78" but that year is in error.

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January 25, 2017
09:30 AM CST

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@gcwarbler came up with a Christmas card I sent out in 1986. It is of a Social Flycatcher I photographed in the Gomez Farias area in June 1986 when he and I and our spouses were on a birding trip there. I no longer have the slide, but thought this would work for an iNat record. I picked this date as we were in the Gomez Farias area all day and the rest of the trip until the 14th we were at Rancho Cielo in the mountains where we did not record Social FC according to my field notes.

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Found this critter in my yard this morning. Only the 2nd time I've had one here locally. This is one of the largest and most impressive robber flies in the U.S. and one of my favorites. I really like the detail of the grasping feet in image 5

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May 20, 2016
12:26 PM CDT

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In Texas, Hutton's Vireo is a common breeder in the mountains of far west Texas such as the Chisos, the Davis and the Guadalupes. Beginning in 1990, increasing numbers of this species have been found to the east in the Texas Hill Country and nesting has been documented in at least 3 or 4 counties just west of Austin and San Antonio. Austin is in Travis County and although there are a few records of the species in Travis Co.:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/561272we have never had documentation of nesting. A City of Austin biologist recently discovered a pair of Hutton's Vireos nest building on the west edge of the city in a preserve tract of land. My friend Mike and I were invited to try to get some shots of these birds to document the record.

When the two biologists and Mike and I arrived, one of the birds (presumably the female?) was on the nest (which is in a large Cedar Elm) hunkered down low. It gave me the impression she was still incubating, but she could be brooding very small chicks as well. One of the biologists, based on her observations, thought the young should be hatched by now. We heard Hutton's Vireo song and other Hutton's call notes in the area several times. After 10-15 minutes we saw another Hutton’s Vireo approaching the nest carrying food. The bird on the nest hopped off and headed into the woods while the bird carrying food went directly to the nest. That bird leaned over and presumably fed a young chick as when it assumed a normal perch position again the food item it had been carrying was gone. We watched that bird lean over into the nest and pick up large pieces of egg shell, and take them away from the nest. With this behavior I suspect the chicks may have hatched this very morning, or were still in the process of breaking out of the eggs while we stood there. Of course, we could not see into the nest because of its height so that is speculation, but in my experience the adults will remove the egg shells very soon after hatching. We stood there a short time longer and I took a few more shots to document the nesting record but then we left so as not to disturb the birds with their tiny chicks any longer.

I plan to go back in several days when the chicks will be larger. Anyway, this is the first documented Travis County nesting of Hutton’s Vireo (although I very strongly suspect it has nested here in the past, just not documented). This is preserve land, not open to the public, so I have been intentionally vague about the mapping, but the nest is within the accuracy circle shown.

By the way, I was hoping to ensure that the egg shells we saw were indeed Hutton’s Vireo and not a nest parasite such as Brown-headed Cowbird. The Hutton’s Vireo eggs are described in various sources as “white with a few small brown dots” while Brown-headed Cowbird eggs are more tinted blue and more heavily mottled overall. I think this pair has baby Hutton’s Vireos which is great. I have posted 6 shots of the Hutton's in various postures and views including a shot of an adult with an egg shell.

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I had just bought a used lens online and was playing around with it. Not the sharpest shots, probably due more to me than the lens and for some reason I was only one stop down from max aperture. But I really was too fixated on this action to make many adjustments or switch lenses.

The little amberwing kept making it a point to perch on this clubtail who flew off a few times but then returned. Kind of embarrassing to be usurped by someone a fourth of your size. At one point he finally allowed the amberwing to perch there for more than just one second.

I was unsure if the amberwing perceived the clubtail's abdomen as a nature perch (as opposed to part of a creature) or if the behavior was intentional to displace him.

Either way...pretty audacious behavior.

---
I think on the image with the red at the bottom the raw file got corrupted. I will search a backup hard drive and see if the data is the same. Kind of disappointing as I have only seen this sort of artefact a handful of times in a decade and it happened to something quite interesting here.

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January 06, 2016
06:36 PM CST

Description

This male kestrel was perched on a cable near the dam at Lake Balmorhea. Since it was misting lightly and the bird had a meal, it did not fly and allowed me to get closer than most kestrels will. Looks like it has a big grasshopper despite the temps in the low 40s.

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November 16, 2015
11:31 AM CST

Description

This tangled vine was climbing over shrubs in the understory of the Sabal Palm grove. It has lanceolate (willow-like) opposite leaves and straight spikes of white flowers arrising terminally and from the upper leaf axils. I've failed to find it in Richardson & King's (2011) "Plants of Deep South Texas". I suspect it may be a leftover cultivated plant from the days when the grove was used as a nursery. Any ID help would be appreciated.

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August 23, 2015
05:25 PM CDT

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We found a coyote actively stalking and hunting Gunnison's Prairie Dogs. The coyote seemed to ignore our car and concentrated on his hunting, but I think the prairie dogs sort of vanished. I know coyotes don't smile, but I swear this fella is smiling at me in the last couple of shots! :-)

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April 06, 2013
05:16 PM CDT

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OK, 45 year old confession here and hope that the statue of limitations has expired. In 1968, I worked at a boy scout ranch in New Mexico for the summer. Three of us on the staff fancied ourselves as falconers. I had a Swainson's Hawk, one of my friends had an American Kestrel and another had a Prairie Falcon. All these birds were taken from nests as babies and we kept them through the summer. All the birds were released back into the wild in late August, 1968, and I hope they survived on their own. In my field journals I have the dates and locations where we caught these young birds, so I thought that perhaps these old slide scans could serve some sort of purpose as data points and in some small way make up for youthful mistakes of taking these birds from their nests.

I have recorded the date and location where the birds were originally found. The actual photos were taken in mid August, 1968.

two images posted, one of the kestrel and one of the group of the three birds. The person holding the kestrel is on the far right in the group.

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April 06, 2013
05:22 PM CDT

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OK, 45 year old confession here and hope that the statue of limitations has expired. In 1968, I worked at a boy scout ranch in New Mexico for the summer. Three of us on the staff fancied ourselves as falconers. I had a Swainson's Hawk, one of my friends had an American Kestrel and another had a Prairie Falcon. All these birds were taken from nests as babies and we kept them through the summer. All the birds were released in late August 1968 and I hope they survived on their own. In my journals I have the dates and locations where we caught these young birds, so I thought that perhaps these old slide scans could serve some sort of purpose as data points and in some small way make up for youthful mistakes of taking these birds from their nests.

I have recorded the date and location where the bird was originally found. The actual photos were taken in mid August, 1968.

Two shots posted, one of the juvenile Swainson's Hawk and one of the group of us holding the birds.

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April 06, 2013
05:19 PM CDT

Description

OK, 45 year old confession here and hope that the statue of limitations has expired. In 1968, I worked at a boy scout ranch in New Mexico for the summer. Three of us on the staff fancied ourselves as falconers. I had a Swainson's Hawk, one of my friends had an American Kestrel and another had a Prairie Falcon. All these birds were taken from nests as babies and we kept them through the summer. All the birds were released in late August 1968 and I hope they survived on their own. In my journals I have the dates and locations where we caught these young birds, so I thought that perhaps these old slide scans could serve some sort of purpose as data points and in some small way make up for youthful mistakes of taking these birds from their nests.

I have recorded the date and location where the bird was originally found. The actual photos were taken in mid August, 1968.

Two images posted, one of the falcon alone and one of the group of three of us with the birds.